for the sight of the weasel pasted against the barn door,
a dozen pellets alone penetrating its upper neck and mid-thorax region.
A mass of blood and fur seemed to have been twisted onto the vicinity
of the latch then held in place as if from afar by many bullet-like
prongs. Surely, the calibre of the shotgun was too strong for his
choice of game.

Bertrand had a tendency for overkill. Possessing a temperament and a
super-charged imagination that demanded structure even when little
existed naturally, his mania for organization had presented itself on
innumerable occasions about the homestead. There had been the case of
his clearing a brood of starlings from the drive house. A messy
business, if you let it but from one Bertrand would not flinch. A half
dozen squawking, flightless birds coiled above the door in the attic
were disposed of. After all, it was his job to end the clatter and they
were an obscene, noxious bird what with laying their eggs in songbirds'
nests and crowding out more desirable species. Moreover, their very
presence constituted an eyesore and that, coupled with their grating
noise, concluded their fate. They were pests, simple and unadulterated,
and on a farm any such nuisance had to be wrenched aside. Still, he had
not drowned them like unwanted kittens or burned them out like that
nest of yellow jackets in the currant bush. A simple twist of their
neck either between the fingers of his leathered gloves (he disliked
the feel of flesh on feather so this necessitated hunting for a thick
pair of mittens), or placing the head of the screaming nestling under
one's boot did the business. Almost effortlessly, but again nothing
about tending land was done entirely without deliberation or exertion.
Structure and foresight held things together. It was the nature of the
beast.

And so it was with Bertrand's decision to hunt bees. The best method to
oust any hive from its perch, so talk ran, was to wrap an old cloth
about a stick and daub it with flammable pitch. Once lit, it made an
impressive torch and could be brandished against pests of any
description. As a kid, Bertrand recalled killing bumblebees in the old
woodshed with a fly swatter. Now that was some kind of action which
allowed the adversary manoeuvrability above and beyond that of skulking
bees with a flame or killing baby birds. The enraged swarm would charge
out from paper lairs encircled about the inner walls of a shed through
whatever chinks